Reflecting on the Colorado recalls  —  We did a poll last weekend in Colorado Senate District 3 and found that voters intended to recall Angela Giron by a 12 point margin, 54/42.  In a district that Barack Obama won by almost 20 points I figured there was no way that could be right and made a rare decision not to release the poll.

WSJ op-ed writer Elizabeth O'Bagy fired for resume lie  —  The Syria researcher whose Wall Street Journal op-piece was cited by Secretary of State John Kerry and Sen. John McCain during congressional hearings about the use of force has been fired from the Institute for the Study of War for lying …

Exclusive: IAC And Daily Beast Editor Tina Brown To Part Ways  —  A source with direct knowledge of the situation says IAC does not plan to renew Tina Brown's contract when it expires in January.  A decision has not yet been made on the future of The Daily Beast.  —  Jason Kempin / FilmMagic

Sydney Leathers, former sexting partner of Anthony Weiner, attempts to crash his election night party  —  The 23-year-old, clad in a tight red dress and platform heels, said that she wanted to finally meet the man who ‘manipulated’ her into a months-long relationship.

Who Do You Trust?  —  WASHINGTON — Vladimir Putin, who keeps Edward Snowden on a leash and lets members of a riotous girl band rot in jail, has thrown President Obama a lifeline.  —  The Russian president had coldly brushed back Obama on Snowden and Syria, and only last week called John Kerry a liar.

Luck and a Shrewd Strategy Fueled de Blasio's Ascension  —  The commercial that changed the course of the mayor's race almost never happened.  —  Bill de Blasio's campaign team had mused about building an ad around his wife, Chirlane McCray, a telegenic African-American poet, then abandoned the concept.

NSA shares raw intelligence with Israel  —  • Secret deal places no legal limits on use of data by Israelis  —  • Only official US government communications protected  —  • Agency insists it complies with rules governing privacy  —  • Read the NSA and Israel's ‘memorandum of understanding’

Trader Joe's To Drop Health Coverage For Part-Time Workers Under Obamacare: Memo  —  After extending health care coverage to many of its part-time employees for years, Trader Joe's has told workers who log fewer than 30 hours a week that they will need to find insurance on the Obamacare exchanges next year …

THE FALLING MAN  —  Do you remember this photograph?  In the United States, people have taken pains to banish it from the record of September 11, 2001.  The story behind it, though, and the search for the man pictured in it, are our most intimate connection to the horror of that day.  —  SPECIAL OFFER

Obama's Zig vs. Zag  —  Two weeks of zig-zag foreign policy by President Barack Obama — marching to war one moment, clinging desperately to diplomacy the next — culminated Tuesday night, appropriately enough, in a zig-zag address to the nation that did little to clarify what will come next …

NR v. Booker  —  Newark mayor Cory Booker has a very active imagination.  Eliana Johnson demonstrated that with her report on Booker's moving, highly detailed accounts of his involvement with “T-Bone,” a hard-luck drug dealer who Booker admitted to a friend is a fiction.

Mark Zuckerberg to meet with top four House Republicans  —  Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg will meet with the top four House Republicans next week in Washington.  —  The high tech CEO's visit comes as Facebook is facing ongoing scrutiny over privacy concerns and Internet safety.

GOP bill blocks food stamp users from buying junk food  —  Rep. Phil Roe (R-Tenn.) on Tuesday proposed legislation that would require people using federal food stamps to buy only healthy food.  —  The Healthy Food Choices Act, H.R. 3073, reflects a long-standing criticism …

Barack Obama's Syria speech was an incoherent mess - he is outperforming Jimmy Carter as the most feeble US president of modern times  —  Billed as a game-changer on Syria, the President's White House address landed with a thud that could be heard as far away as Damascus.

BOOK REVIEW: ‘America 3.0’  —  AMERICA 3.0: REBOOTING AMERICAN PROSPERITY IN THE 21ST CENTURY — WHY AMERICA'S GREATEST DAYS ARE YET TO COME  —  As we return to reality from the lazy, hazy days of summer, we find our nation war-weary, broke and politically fractured.  We are a subprime-mortgaged house divided.